Tucker Carlson and Democracy
Even Fox News may be rethinking what's good for America! Tucker Carlson, a Fox News pundit and Hillary Clinton basher, recently wrote that perhaps the conservative wing of policy makers should start considering what is good for the American family when they make changes to our economic infrastructure of wages, taxes and support and stop only considering what is good for the bottom line of American corporations. This change was apparently provoked by Mitt Romney's call for maintaining the status quo economically. Carlson apparently doesn't like the fact that Romney receives $22 million dollars a year from his investments and only pays 14% tax. Who does? Ocasio-Cortez would like to see him paying 70% taxes on this income, like when Eisenhower, another Republican, was president.
Carlson says his reason for moving away from a true libertarian stance on the free market capitalism is that if the right doesn't make that move they will, eventually, get a form of European style socialism. Part of me would like the Right to refuse to compromise so we will move more quickly toward Europe. But we must consider Trump! We must consider him because he is president and people are forced to listen. If he were not president, no one would spend a minute listening to his unsupported blather and lies. But, this is American where 'anyone' can get elected president and we happened to get a Horatio Alger story where, not a poor boy who worked hard to get ahead, got elected, but an ignoramus was able to bluster and lie his way into the highest office.
And he happens to be an autocrat because he must. He has no information to use to form policies that are rational. All he has is his 'common sense' which Einstein said is "the layer of prejudice laid down before the age of 16." So we have a 16 year old with a faulty moral compass running the country and we must pay attention because he has a gun.
This is not a metaphor. Trump is the commander in chief of the military. He is preparing to use them to build the wall between Mexico and America. We need to pay attention to him because if he gets the army used to doing his bidding, we are in trouble.
Carlson's move away from the free market looks like moving toward the aisle in Congress. Carlson isn't an elected official, but Fox News is a policy marketing firm for the Republican Party. He is a little like Sarah Huckabee Sanders with an audience. The Republican and Democrats must come together and work to run our government democratically if we are to avoid the autocratic maneuvering of Donald Trump. The final chapter of How Democracies Die suggest how to avoid having an autocratic president strip us of our freedom. Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that our two polarized parties need to come together over issues that are important even if they do not reduce the distance between themselves ideologically. They need to exercise two qualities of civil discourse and politics: forbearance and toleration. In other words everyone needs to stop fighting like the Republicans if we want to preserve our democracy. McConnell's refusal to consider Merritt Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, North Carolina's Republican's bad loser politics of stripping the incoming governor of powers (a strategy that metastasized to Wisconsin) were politics where forbearance and toleration were ignored. It is the politics of 'winning at all costs'. The cost may turn out to be our democracy.
Let's hope that the rule of law, the power our constitution, and the American people's desire to live in a free democracy will counteract this McConnell/Trump desire for authoritarian rule. In many ways McConnell is most culpable. He has experience in government. His use of hardball politics to get his way ideologically demonstrates he cares more about his pocketbook, his religion, and his re-election possibilities than he does about our democratic institutions.
Carlson says his reason for moving away from a true libertarian stance on the free market capitalism is that if the right doesn't make that move they will, eventually, get a form of European style socialism. Part of me would like the Right to refuse to compromise so we will move more quickly toward Europe. But we must consider Trump! We must consider him because he is president and people are forced to listen. If he were not president, no one would spend a minute listening to his unsupported blather and lies. But, this is American where 'anyone' can get elected president and we happened to get a Horatio Alger story where, not a poor boy who worked hard to get ahead, got elected, but an ignoramus was able to bluster and lie his way into the highest office.
And he happens to be an autocrat because he must. He has no information to use to form policies that are rational. All he has is his 'common sense' which Einstein said is "the layer of prejudice laid down before the age of 16." So we have a 16 year old with a faulty moral compass running the country and we must pay attention because he has a gun.
This is not a metaphor. Trump is the commander in chief of the military. He is preparing to use them to build the wall between Mexico and America. We need to pay attention to him because if he gets the army used to doing his bidding, we are in trouble.
Carlson's move away from the free market looks like moving toward the aisle in Congress. Carlson isn't an elected official, but Fox News is a policy marketing firm for the Republican Party. He is a little like Sarah Huckabee Sanders with an audience. The Republican and Democrats must come together and work to run our government democratically if we are to avoid the autocratic maneuvering of Donald Trump. The final chapter of How Democracies Die suggest how to avoid having an autocratic president strip us of our freedom. Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that our two polarized parties need to come together over issues that are important even if they do not reduce the distance between themselves ideologically. They need to exercise two qualities of civil discourse and politics: forbearance and toleration. In other words everyone needs to stop fighting like the Republicans if we want to preserve our democracy. McConnell's refusal to consider Merritt Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, North Carolina's Republican's bad loser politics of stripping the incoming governor of powers (a strategy that metastasized to Wisconsin) were politics where forbearance and toleration were ignored. It is the politics of 'winning at all costs'. The cost may turn out to be our democracy.
Let's hope that the rule of law, the power our constitution, and the American people's desire to live in a free democracy will counteract this McConnell/Trump desire for authoritarian rule. In many ways McConnell is most culpable. He has experience in government. His use of hardball politics to get his way ideologically demonstrates he cares more about his pocketbook, his religion, and his re-election possibilities than he does about our democratic institutions.
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